Studio News

Did You Know? Calendar Syncing

Friday, September 3, 2021 by Graham Yates | Helpful Hints

Having been self-employed nearly all my teenage and adult life, I have had to come to terms with balancing a sometimes erratic schedule. Between cobbling together rehearsals, teaching blocks, performances, health & fitness appointments, and social events I pretty early on had to adopt a strict policy of "If it's not in the calendar, it doesn't exist."

I vaguely remember when Google rolled out its Calendar feature and pretty much that was the end of those spiral-bound paper calendars for me! Now my calendar goes everywhere I do (or rather, my phone goes) and I even have it color coded based on what entity is demanding my time at the moment.

I live by my calendar, and rely on calendar syncing from MyMusicStaff (my teaching database) to Google Calendar.

It occurred to me today that I ought to share this feature more broadly. While I spend my days tethered to an open MyMusicStaff window on my computer, I bet many families struggle to understand how to integrate yet another educational app into their long list of StrangelyNamedInCamelCase apps various teachers and clubs require them to sign up for.

Your MyMusicStaff account shows you everything from your lesson schedule to your billing, to past lesson notes, to your practicing trends (if you choose to log your practicing). That's all fine and good if you remember to log in every once in a while (and dig out your originally assigned temporary password... oops).

But what if you could have your MyMusicStaff calendar sync with your Google Calendar, iCal, Outlook or even Blackberry (!) - you know, your calendar of choice that you already use to schedule the rest of your life?

Well... you can!

Here are the instructions to do so, straight from the folks at MyMusicStaff themselves:

You have the ability to sync your My Music Staff calendar to your personal mobile device. This is a one-way sync. So, changes must be made in your My Music Staff account.

  1. Log into My Music Staff on your mobile device.
  2. Navigate to the "Calendar".
  3. Tap the purple "Setup Sync" button in the top-right of your calendar.
  4. Select your device type from the drop-down menu.
  5. Follow the onscreen instructions to complete the sync.

Now, in addition to receiving email and/or text reminders of upcoming piano lessons or events, you will be able to see the lesson itself in your calendar.

Sweet, sweet peace of mind is yours!

Happy practicing!

The Five Best Books About Piano Playing

Thursday, April 23, 2020 by Graham Yates | Helpful Hints

Whether you find yourself with extra time to read or you are looking for some inspiration to complement your piano lessons, look no further than these five wonderful books. All of them are accessible to non-professionals though they are perhaps a little too dense for young children. Still, even if the piano student in question is a child in your care, there is much value for them if you are inspired by what you read.


The Great Pianists:

From Mozart to the PresentBy Harold C. Schonberg


So much of the history of the piano is conveyed through the personalities who stirred the public’s imagination with their mesmerizing and evocative performances. Most books on music history, however, focus on the composers rather than the performers. This book fills in these overlooked but fascinating gaps. It covers the development of the instrument itself, the early period when composers and performers were virtually the same person, through the societal upheavals that created public concert halls and the celebrity circus that motivated the showmanship of the 19th century.


You’ll learn important historical names, how nearly all contemporary piano students can trace the lineage of their teachers back to either Liszt or Leschetizky (and both of these go back to Beethoven!), and discover the pervasive struggle to make a singing instrument out of what is essentially a tuned drum.


An excellent book to let simmer and to savor in doses!


The Piano Shop on the Left Bank:


Discovering a Forgotten Passion in a Paris Atelier
By Thad Carhart

 


An breath-taking memoir of an American living in Paris who takes up piano lessons as an adult and is swept into the romantic world of music. If you are looking for something to make your heart soar while filling your mind with broad musical considerations – look no further. I received a copy of this book from my teacher as a college graduation gift and it is still one of my dearest treasures.


 







The Art of Practicing:

A Guide to Making Music from the Heart

By Madeline Bruser


The classic! Far from a book of practicing rules or even a scientific treatise on practicing (these kind of books are great, too!), The Art of Practicing is an inspirational collection of thoughts and anecdotes on the topic of motivation, practical considerations, finding your tribe and stopping to smell the roses as you keep your eye on the prize. Am I being too cliché? Yes, in the most wonderful way possible!










 


Evening in the Palace of Reason:

Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment

By James Gaines





For world history and philosophy fans, this book examines the crossover period from Baroque to Classical from the perspective of two towering figures. Bach, the absolute master of an increasingly outmoded artistic style, and Frederick the Great, a powerful ruler but pompous dilletante, clash over democracy and monarchy, complexity and simplicity, science and art, and how they will shape the future, modern world.


A highly entertaining way to learn about the culture of the times surrounding Bach’s music and how that culture tipped into the next great periods of western art history.


The Inner Game of Tennis:

The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance

By W. Timothy Gallwey


Personally, I enjoyed this original “Inner game” book more than the one adapted for musicians. Though it is certainly merely popular science, it taught me to think of my two “conscious” and “unconscious” selves and how they can be antagonists or collaborators in my efforts to translate musical messages from my brain to my body. The book has much to say about “choking” – i.e. performance anxiety in its many forms. Novice and developing musicians will certainly relate on many levels to the lessons learned on the tennis court.


How to Use a Metronome (For Effectiveness and Fun)

Wednesday, April 22, 2020 by Graham Yates | Helpful Hints

A metronome is an indispensable tool for a musician at any level, but it is essential to know how to use it effectively.


A metronome is a device that plays a sound, usually a click, at a set time interval, measured in beats per minute (BPM). Sometimes classical music will display BPM as “MM” meaning “Maeltzel’s Metronome.” Maeltzel was a prominent metronome manufacturer in 18th-century Vienna (and a contemporary of Beethoven). These days, athletes use metronomes to train by keeping track of their pace.


How NOT to Use a Metronome

If you walk the halls of a music school, you may hear metronomes ticking away non-stop as students practice. But this is the opposite way to use a metronome effectively, in my opinion. The danger in trusting a metronome to keep you in time by “setting and forgetting” it is that our brains have an extraordinary to filter out irrelevant noise. The last thing a musician wants to do is train their brain to become less aware of their acoustic surroundings.


How to Use a Metronome


  1. Set your tempo. Set the metronome to the BPM number you want (don't hesitate to experiment till you find an ideal pace), listen to the tempo for a few clicks, then turn it off. Try to play at this tempo.
  2. Check your tempo. See if you’ve maintained the tempo you set: Stop playing, turn the metronome back on, and listen and compare its tempo with your tempo. This is great for training your audiation: your ability to imagine or accurately remember sounds.
  3. Play to the beat. This is a subtle art which, as I mentioned above, can have a negative effect if used carelessly. Play along to a metronome only for pre-determined sections and then STOP. Don’t mindlessly play with the metronome on or you may soon discover you are no longer paying attention to it. Which is bad. When playing along, try to center your notes’ attacks on the click of the metronome. This is a great way to discover what it means when musicians play on the “front” or the “back” of the beat. If it is difficult for you to stay with the metronome, you are probably asking too much of yourself so you must simplify. See below:
  4. Work on slow playing. People often think metronomes are best used to train musicians to play fast, but I have found it is better to use them to play slow. Metronomes can keep your slow playing honest and slow playing allows you be more aware of the beat. The “beat” is more than a point in time – it is a whole sensory experience full of moments of expectation, preparation and action. “The beat” can be further subdivided into smaller and smaller beats. Worlds within worlds, "I contain multitudes," etc.
  5. Work on fast playing. It seems reasonable to think that notching the metronome up one setting at a time is a great way to progressively increase the tempo of a fast passage, but again I offer a contrarian perspective. I have found that once I have practiced a passage slowly with diligence, I can crank up the tempo surprisingly sooner than expected. In other words, instead of working on a a passage using this time-consuming succession of tempos: 42-44-46-48-52-56-60-66-72-80-84-88-92-96-100-104-108-112-116-120, you may discover your trajectory is more like this: 42-60-100-120. Or what about OVER-shooting your goal tempo for even more reliability? 42-60-100-144-120. Again, it comes down to the initial, diligent slow practice.
  6. Subdivide the beat. A subdivision is a beat-within-a-beat. Just like whole numbers in math, the main beat can be subdivided into infinitely smaller components. Divide a quarter-note pulse in half and you get eighth notes; do it again you get quarter notes. Divide a quarter note into three parts (triplets) or five parts – or whatever! Playing a quarter note-heavy melody (like Ode to Joy) with the metronome pulsing on sixteenth notes really solidifies your sense of beat. Playing a sixteenth-note run with the metronome pulsing on sixteenth notes (rather than the typical quarter note) can reveal small discrepancies that if left undiscovered may be derailing your passage work. You may need to adjust fingering, or even just adjust your sense of real time at that spot. The possibilities for improving one’s stability are endless and exciting.

 

What kind of metronome to get?


There are several metronomes available and one of the main features is style.


The classic


Mechanical. Stylish. Looks great as furniture. Keeps the beat.




 

The digital


Battery-powered. Get the one with the dial to quickly set the speed you want. Easily portable from home to practice room to rehearsal. Has a headphone jack as well as the option to merely flash the beat inaudibly (I use that feature to discreetly check a student’s tempo while they are playing). This one is my preference for ease of use.



The fancy


Before apps, this kind of metronome was the first time musicians could change the sound of the beat pulses (including a human voice saying “one, two three”), choose which beats were accented, and emphasize subdivisions.



The app

Conveniently stored on a device this metronome would seem to be the most practical. Often they come with great features for changing the tone of the pulse, subdividing, accenting, etc. They usually have a wider range of available BPM than physical metronomes do. The one drawback for me is that it takes too long to open my phone, find the app, set it up and hit play, compared to grabbing my digital metronome and turning it on.


Need a metronome in a pinch?

Do you need a metronome right now but haven’t bothered to get one yet? Try You Tube! Search for the number of BPM you want, and add “BPM metronome” – for example: “144 BPM metronome.” This search query found videos of nothing but pulses for 30 minutes.


But wait – there’s more!

Have you considered having a little fun with your metronomic endeavors? Here are five alternative ways to play along to a metronome beat you may not have considered.



1. Play your Baroque minuet accompanied by a hi-hat swing beat

 

2. Play your Classical sonatina accompanied by a rock beat. 

 

3. Play your Hanon finger exercises to a Latin beat 

 

4. Play your etude to a groove beat 

 

5. Learn Afro-cuban rhythms! You can use a variety of percussion instruments you might have at home already, or use body percussion (slap, tap, vocalize, etc.), or RH/LH notes or chords on the keyboard. 

Try This Trick to Play Along With YouTube Piano Videos

Tuesday, February 25, 2020 by Graham Yates | Helpful Hints

How to use You Tube to help you learn to play your new piano pieces


You Tube is an incredible gift to music students. Over the years, the number of classical music-themed videos has increased exponentially to the point where you can practically watch and listen to dozens of videos of the pieces you are learning right now!


Sometimes students express to me that listening to the pieces they are trying to learn is somehow "cheating." I get it. I've thought and said the same thing when I was young. The thinking goes that by listening to someone else's interpretation of a piece before you've had time to learn it and come up with your own interpretation, robs you of some kind of musical growth. At the same time - what the heck?! Everyone who takes piano lessons wants to learn to play piano music, so why would we neglect any tool that gets us to that goal faster, easier and with more joy?


We often approach new pieces with our eyes: we read the musical notation. Then we approach it with our touch: we attempt to play the notes that are on the page on the piano. But consider this: music is an art form for our hearing. If I want to teach you to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, would you rather I give you the sheet music, or sing it for you? If I wanted to teach you to play it, and you had basic note-reading ability, imagine if I both gave you the sheet music to study and played it for you!


So, you have my full and enthusiastic permission to listen to your piano pieces - over and over!


When you listen to your pieces on You Tube, first you have to find them. I find that searching for the title and the composer often gets me there. For pieces that need more search criteria, or don't have composers (like folksongs), you can add "piano" to your search. You'll have to sift through a lot of search results, I imagine. Some might be audio recordings where the video element is just a still shot of an album cover. Others might be tutorials where I professional plays while the camera shoots an angle that allows you to see her fingers on the keys. Still others might be performances, either by professionals or fellow students whose ages may vary widely. Look for a video or audio quality that suits you, and listen - listen - to the performance. What can you listen for? Interpretation. Does the music speak to you? Does the performance inspire you to imitate it? If not, why not? You can sometimes learn as much from observing a bad performance as you can by observing a good one.

Don't just listen - play along!


Playing along to a recording can be a rewarding learning experience. It functions like a metronome, but also allows you to experience the flow and the emotion.


Some students express frustration, though, because it's difficult to play along with a video's finished performance of a piece while you are still only learning it. Let me introduce you to...


...Variable playback speed!


When I was a kid, slowing down or speeding up an analog recording meant lowering or raising the pitch, too. Not so in this digital age! You can slow down a video's playback without affecting its pitch.


To do this, click on the "settings" gear icon. Then click on "playback speed" which should be automatically set to "normal". I have found that you can change the speed to .75 and the change in audio quality is negligible. Go to .5 and it might start to sound too distorted to be useful, though your tolerance may vary from mine.


So, enjoy! I hope this little trick opens up more ways to interact with the amazing tool that is You Tube.


Notes


Speakers. You may find that turning up the volume on your computer or device may still not be enough to compete with your piano playing, especially if you have an acoustic piano. If this is the case, I would suggest a good Bluetooth speaker that you can place close to you while you play (on top of the piano, on the stand next to you, or perhaps using headphones).


By the way, can speeding up You Tube videos be useful? Usually, that feature is used to speed through spoken word videos for whatever reason (you're in a hurry or you already know the content and just don't need to hear it explained at normal thinking speed). I wouldn't necessarily suggest trying to play along with a music video at a faster speed because the audio distortion and the way it will distort the performer's interpretation just don't seem to be worth it. (If you can play a piece faster than a video, it would seem that you might not need to play along with a video to learn it.) But if you can think of a helpful reason to use this feature, let me know!


Suzuki Piano Book 1 Videos

Sunday, September 22, 2019 by Graham Yates | Helpful Hints

Here is a resource for new Suzuki piano families. Save this link to refer to a pianist's-eye-view of all the steps toward completing Suzuki book 1.


Not only does this playlist include videos of all of the pieces in the book, but also includes some hands separate demonstrations as well. Here's an example:


Here's "Cuckoo", RH:

  Now, here's "Cuckoo" LH: 

  And, then there's "Cuckoo" with both hands:

  You can also use the video's "settings" function to slow down the video for easier learning - up to 25% speed! Use the HD quality setting for the sharpest video image.